On the menu today: The report that Donald Trump and his team absent-mindedly kept a set of antique ceramic oil lamps which are part of Israel’s national-treasures collection — and that the lamps are still sitting somewhere in Mar-a-Lago, probably next to a stack of boxes full of White House papers — is yet another demonstration that A) no, Trump does not hire “the best people” to work for him; B) no, Trump and his team do not respect others; and C) Trump and the team around him are perpetual scofflaws, disregarding the rules and ignoring all kinds of warnings that they will get in trouble for it later.
Treasure Hunt at Mar-a-Lago
Forget the Dial of Destiny; Indiana Jones should have gone hunting for the Israeli lamps in Mar-a-Lago. Or maybe this is more of a job for Nicholas Cage, after stealing the Declaration of Independence.
This morning, the Israeli publication Haaretz reports that somewhere among all those boxes at Trump’s estate in Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., is a set of ancient ceramic oil lamps which are part of Israel’s national-treasures collection. They were sent to the U.S. in 2019 to be part of a White House Hanukah candle-lighting ceremony:
Among the antiquities are ancient ceramic oil lamps which are part of Israel’s national treasures collection. They were sent to the U.S. in 2019 with the approval of then-Director of the Israeli Antiquities Authority, Israel Hasson, on the condition that they be returned within weeks, yet almost four years later, they have yet to be returned.
Current Director of the Antiquities Authority Eli Eskozido has contacted the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, and former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, asking them to aid in returning the items, thus far without success. It is unclear whether Trump himself is aware that the items are on the premises of his estate.
If you go back and watch the video of the ceremony, you won’t see the lamps or any mention of them. According to Haartez, the lamps arrived in the U.S., but American government officials worried that the lamps may have originated in the West Bank, and that displaying them at the White House would have violated international antiquities law. (The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has an investigative arm that looks into reports of importation and distribution of stolen or looted cultural property.)
After the ceremony, the Israeli Antiquities Authority reportedly did not want the lamps sent back to Israel on a regular flight or with an international shipping company, fearing they would be damaged. A few months later, the Covid pandemic shut down life around the world and delayed the return of the lamps further. The IAA asked Saul Fox, a major Jewish-American donor to the organization, to keep the items until they could be brought back to Israel. But, Haaretz reports, Israeli authorities discovered several months ago that the antiquities instead ended up at Mar-a-Lago, “where they still remain.”
Heck, maybe the Ark of the Covenant is among those boxes somewhere, too.
As the article mentions, Trump may not be aware that he’s got several items from Israel’s national-treasures collection in boxes of stuff from his presidency. If you want to blame the White House staff, that’s fine, but recall that Trump regularly boasts that he only hires “the best people.” No, he doesn’t. He hires sycophants of dubious competence, gets rid of anyone who tells him things he doesn’t want to hear, and then later complains about how poorly served he is.
I can hear some reader out there scoffing, asking why anyone outside of Israel should care about these lamps. Besides the all-too-easy rejoinder, “it belongs in a museum!” — this situation vividly demonstrates the habitual attitude of Trump and his staff toward rules, regulations, the law, and how they choose to treat other people.
At heart, Trump is a scofflaw. He doesn’t think any rules apply to him, and unsurprisingly, those who work for him pick up this habit and philosophy. They’re sloppy, disorganized, and careless about other people’s stuff. Even if you don’t care about a couple of ancient lamps, those lamps matter a great deal to the Israeli Antiquities Authority, and sending the lamps here was an act of faith and trust. Through sheer carelessness, Trump and his team violated that trust. It’s not just about the lamps themselves, it’s about demonstrating respect for other people and what they value.
Trump runs around, convinced he’s the world’s biggest friend to Israel, boasting on Truth Social in October of last year:
No President has done more for Israel than I have. Somewhat surprisingly, however, our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S. Those living in Israel, though, are a different story – Highest approval rating in the World, could easily be P.M.! U.S. Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel – Before it is too late!
Unsurprisingly, many Jews did not appreciate a former president speaking about them as if they were a single-minded monolith.
If you’re the kind of person who runs around bragging about how you’re the biggest friend of Israel, you really must return its stuff when it asks.
Keep in mind, this is not the first time Trump walked off with something valuable from a foreign government and didn’t pay for it:
A spreadsheet compiled by White House aides in the final days of the Trump administration listed gifts that Mr. Trump needed to decide whether he wanted to keep. Among the items that he had already decided to accept and publicly disclose was a gold pendant necklace that he had received during a trip to Saudi Arabia in 2017.
The necklace, which was valued at $6,400, was “on moving truck to Mar-a-Lago,” according to the spreadsheet. There is no evidence Mr. Trump paid for the necklace. In response to questions from the committee, the National Archives said it believed it was in possession of the necklace but had not gone through its warehouse to find it. [Emphasis added.]
El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, gave Trump a life-size portrait of the American president. The portrait was missing until it was found at a Trump property in March of this year:
In the bowels of the Trump National Doral hotel in Miami, in a small space leading to electrical rooms, an enormous portrait of the 45th president of the United States rests on a piece of deteriorating purple-colored foam.
Stored next to a stack of old yoga mats, the former president’s portrait sits underneath a halogen light and the metal sheen of air ducts, propped between two doors with placards that read “ELECTRICAL ROOM No Storage.”
The tiny room is overwhelmed by the grandiose portrait, standing about eight feet tall and featuring a grinning Donald J. Trump.
Almost every state visit by a foreign leader involves the exchange of gifts. Under U.S. law, the gifts are to our country, not to the particular official accepting them, but the official has the option of purchasing them at fair market value. The gifts, and whether they were purchased or not, are periodically disclosed in the Federal Register. (Back in 2006, I detailed the gifts to then-CIA director George Tenet. An unidentified CIA employee received a “Qum silk rug,” about 7 feet by 4 feet, in emerald green and red, on May 8, 2004. Qum, a city famous for its ornate rugs, is in Iran, which has no diplomatic relations with the United States. Shortly before Christmas 2004, King Abdullah and Queen Rania of Jordan gave Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld an “aromatherapy gift set” valued at $380. It may never be known if the collection of scents soothed the secretary’s nerves; the gift was turned over to the General Services Administration.)
The Trump White House simply didn’t prioritize keeping track of gifts to Trump from foreign leaders and visitors. The gift reports filed for the first three years of the Trump administration were incomplete, and House Democrats contended that Trump and his family failed to report more than 100 foreign gifts with a total value of more than $250,000. Then, the U.S. State Department revealed that the Executive Office of the President simply didn’t provide any foreign-gift listing for the year 2020.
But wait, there’s more:
According to reports, the Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, gave then-President-elect Trump a $3,755 gold golf driver in November 2016 and sought to cultivate a “special relationship.” Federal Register listings showed zero foreign gifts reported for President Trump from Prime Minister Abe in 2017, 2018, or 2019, but internal White House records reveal that Prime Minister Abe gave additional golf clubs to President Trump during visits to the Trump International Golf Club and Kasumigaseki Country Club in 2017 and 2018. These gifts included a putter valued at $460 and a driver valued at $3,040. NARA has no records of these golf clubs and does not have the golf clubs in its custody. GSA also has no records of the golf clubs being purchased.
Mind you, the question of gifts from foreign leaders was serious and consequential enough for the Founding Fathers to put this in the Constitution, declaring, “No person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.” The Constitution is clear on this — if any U.S. official, including the president, wants to keep a gift from a foreign government, they need to follow the law. Trump regularly ignored it.
And with this kind of scofflaw attitude . . . we shouldn’t be surprised that Trump has been indicted twice, may well be indicted a third time by Special Counsel Jack Smith in the near future, and may well be indicted for a fourth time in Georgia by Fulton County district attorney Fani T. Willis.
ADDENDA: In case you missed it yesterday, promising 2022 House candidate Hung Cao is running for U.S. Senate in Virginia, and Texas Democrats are once again convinced that this is the year that they will defeat senator Ted Cruz.
Over in the Washington Post, I have some thoughts on the state of libertarianism in the aftermath of last week’s FreedomFest conference.